Rare-coin deal buys scandal for Ohio governor (USA TODAY)

[salin]

The story goes national. Still understates the amount lost, so far more than 300 million (also includes a 10+ million loss by fifth third bank, and another big loss by Alegiant (sp?) - but none the less:

Rare-coin deal buys scandal for Ohio governor

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The family of Ohio Gov. Bob Taft has been known for many things — political success, conservatism and public service spanning more than a century.

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft was re-elected in a landslide in 2002. Now he has a 17% approval rating.

snip

Like many scandals, this one started about one thing: The Toledo Blade reported in April that Thomas Noe, a prominent Republican fundraiser and friend of the governor, had been given $50 million from the Bureau of Workers' Compensation to invest for the state in rare coins. The governor defended his friend, a long-time supporter, before it was revealed that $10 million to $13 million of the rare coin fund is unaccounted for.

Investigation widens

Now the scandal — "Coingate," as it is called in Ohio — has expanded into other areas and includes charges of coverup, cronyism and ethical lapses.

more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16-coingate-taft_x.htm

[Lindsay]

1. It's about damned time

this got noticed outside of Ohio and the left side of the net.

[Algorem]

2. 2Decision today on Taft charges(1st Oh. Gov. criminally charged in office?

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1124271195126030.xml&coll=2

Free rounds of golf spurred ethics probe

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Columbus - Prosecutors are expected to decide today whether Gov. Bob Taft will go down in history as Ohio's first governor charged with a crime while in office.

On Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors received findings of an Ohio Ethics Commission investigation into Taft's June 21 announcement that he failed to include a number of free rounds of golf on his annual ethics statements.

Representatives of the Columbus city attorney and Franklin County prose cutor plan to meet this morn ing to discuss the findings, said Franklin County Prose cutor Ron O'Brien.

"The purpose of the meeting is to review the materials and determine what - if any - charges should be filed or what - if any - charges are appropriate," O'Brien said...

[mod mom]

3. This scandal effected the election in Ohio. Noe's wife was the Chair of

Lucas County BOE. Lucas County (Toledo) is a county rich in democratic votes. Estimated tens of thousands of votes were lost due to Repug tampering. It was so bad that even Kenneth Blackwell was forced to put out a scathing report: (ignored by the DNC investigation)

This report includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.


-One-half of the ballots printed and used in the 2004 general election in Lucas county were stored in an open space on the fhird floor of the county warehouse with no security measures in place.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation on Lucas County BOE page 4



-Live ballots were delivered to polling locations a week in advance of the election. Although the ballots were retrieved, one board employee who was assigned to the warehouse informed the SOS staff that he did not believe all the ballots were successfully retrieved.
SOURCE; SOS Investigation, page 5



-Lucas County BOE failed to record or retrieve ballot stub numbers of absentee voters’ ballots as required by statute OH Revised Code 3505.23. It was reported by an elector that her mother had received not one, but three absentee voter ballots. there was no way to determine if similar incidents occurred and if so how many.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, page 7




-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.



-In late September or early October an employee of the Ohio Republican Party contacted Sam Thurber (*involved with politician wife Maggie Thurber in Noe scandal.) wanting to inspect and have copies made of all recently returned voter registrations, Ohio Republican Party offered to furnish volunteers to assist with copying postcards. No one at the Lucas County BOE can confirm that anyone was assigned to supervise Republican volunteers. On their second day of copying, a BOE employee, Jennifer Bernath, Democratic Booth Official) saw republican party volunteers peeling off the yellow return stickers applied by the post office. (Violation of RC 149.43 (B) (I) , and agruably a violation of 149.351.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, pgs 18-19

*Among those whose donations have caught the attention of investigators are:

City Councilman Betty Shultz; former state representative Sally Perz, her husband, Joe, and her daughter, Allison; former county elections Director *Joe Kidd; county Auditor Larry Kaczala and his wife, Gina; County Commissioner Maggie Thurber and her husband, Sam; and two of Mr. Noe’s co-workers at Vintage Coins and Collectibles, partner Tim Lapointe and executive assistant Susan Metzger. Mr. Lapointe’s wife, Linda, also donated.

All of the above gave the campaign $2,000 except the Thurbers; each of them gave $1,950 to the campaign. The $23,900 in donations were made between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5, 2003.

(*Former Lucas County BOE Director Joe Kidd now serves as atoorney to Diebold Lobbyist Pat Gallina, who has been connected to offering checks and strong arming County board of Election officials)

Path of donations At issue is whether Mr. Noe gave people money in order for them to give to the Bush campaign, allowing Mr. Noe to exceed federal spending limits, law-enforcement sources said.
Source:
Toledo Blade - FBI Raids GOP Donor Noe's Condo
Friday, April 29, 2005




-The Swanton 3 poll book turned up missing and has never been recovered.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 16


-The number of precincts in Lucas County for the November 2003 election was 530 precincts, at the time of the November 2, 2004 election there were 495 precincts. (Can you guess where precincts were deleted?)

[wishlist]

4. Good article- makes it clear this involves major Republican corruption

I love all the parallels pointed out in the article between Taft family dynasty and Bush family- powerful high ranking Repubs, Yale Skull and Bones etc.

Outrageous cronyism, coverups and ethical lapses were a natural evolution of Ohio voters allowing Repubs to get so much control over government.

"This is not just about coins. It's about a pay-to-play system that has been going on in Ohio for years," says state Rep. Chris Redfern, House Democratic leader. "Since I got here in 1999, it's been an open secret that if you contribute money, you get the state jobs you want and the state contracts you want."

Redfern says the Ohio Constitution does not permit the impeachment or recall of a governor, so Taft has little risk of losing his job, which he is scheduled to leave in 2007. But the controversy could signal the end of a five-generation political dynasty."

[struggle4progress]

5. kick

[Barkley]

6. Ohio doesn't have a "Recall" clause in its constitution - too bad

Taft is at 17% that's lower than Bush, Gray Davis or Arnold

[salin]

8. Probably, politically speaking, not a bad thing for dems

in the sense that the unravelling of these scandals is going to take a long time. If Taft was gone - folks might read the stories - but keep thinking to themselves "that was tied to the one bad apple, and he is gone..." - this way - on going reminder (his being in office) how much his administration (with other GOP office holders up and down the ticket benefitting from big donations) are spending Ohio taxpayer dollars to essentially enrich others.

[Stil]

7. Okay everyone

Lets move social security in to private accounts the repub's control. :puke: :grr:

"The workers' compensation fund losses revealed it lost another $215 million investing with a politically connected firm in high-risk hedge funds. Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported that, in all, firms that managed $14 billion for the state workers' compensation fund contributed nearly $5 million to Republicans from 1997 through 2004, including $700,000 to Taft."